


Barbacoa

by gardnerhill



Series: A Study In Crimson [13]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Medieval Medicine, Pirates, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Some </i>Terrors of the High Seas don’t do well in the heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barbacoa

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2015 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #21, _**Heat Rash**_ _. It's a muggy, hot summer and someone's reacting badly. Metaphorical bonus points for including salve/lotion/ointment and needing help applying it._

The Doldrums. Days of not a breath of wind, sun beating down, sheets and ratlines still as the mast. The light bouncing off the sea is as hot and glaring as the sun – a bronze shield that burns and blinds in its own right. Men on a ship become the iron held between the anvil of the sea and the hammer of the sun. Mutiny weather, they call it.

Navy captains respond to this by doubling both the crew’s workload and the grog ration, reasoning that a pack of gang-pressed, relentlessly abused, overworked and blazing hot men are less likely to slit throats if they’re too exhausted and legless to take up arms.

Then again, Navy captains are faced with a shipful of men who can’t swim, can only stare gloomily at the hateful sunlight glaring off the billowing sea as they get hotter and hotter – and angrier and angrier.

SPLASH!

The Bakers whooped and shouted as Gregson resurfaced from his leap off the jib line, shaking back his wet hair. Half the crew was swimming around the barque like motley porpoises. The other half were on deck or sweltering below in their hammocks, resting in lieu of sleep denied because of the heat. The ship’s bos’n Angel laughed at the men’s antics, but his eyes and attentions never left the water from his place at the ship’s waist; nor did his harpoon, poised and ready for the first sign of a shark fin.

The captain and I were removed from the men swimming, however – I, because I’d stopped my swim lessons after losing a hand to my captor, and also because Shear-Lock required my assistance in his cabin. Even with the portholes open the room was stifling; no breeze relieved the man on the bed.

“Christ on the Cross, Jack!”

“Language, Cap’n,” I said in a jesting manner even as I pitied the man. I’d never met any man at sea so loth to indulge in profanity, even while I was sewing his arm back together. For Shear-Lock to blaspheme was a sign of great distress.

The Baker’s chief, one of the most feared pirates in the seven seas, was in a pitiable state – his throat, arms, and groin were red-speckled as if with the pox. “Heat-pox, or heat rash,” I said sternly when Wiggins would have dashed away in horror, “it’s not fatal and it doesn’t catch. It’s sun’s heat trapped in the skin.”

Fortunately Wiggins and I had prepared a cask of ointment for the crew’s sun-wounds – invaluable on a ship in the tropics – with the aid of Angelo the cook (who divided up his precious scraps of fat between me and his Sunday duff for the men).

“I smell like a platter of _barbacoa_ ,” Shear-Lock said peevishly as the surgeon’s mate and I slathered him (I’d removed my saw-hand to have both limbs free for this task).

Wiggins and I bit our lips to keep from laughing, because it was true – the herbs we’d added to the rendered fat poorly disguised its bovine nature. All the captain needed now was a good wrap in _maguey_ leaves and a steaming in an underground pit (sadly, his piping-hot quarters would serve the purpose admirably).

“I’d prefer you smelled like Christmas dinner, Captain, but beef tallow is easier gained in these islands than goose-grease.”

Wiggins snorted, then set his face straight with a penitent “Sorry, Cap’n.”

“Should have both of you flogged for that,” Shear-Lock groaned.

And both of us would have been flogged for that insolence, had we been on a Royal Navy vessel. Odd how much more humane a pirate ship was to its crew than was a ship of Their Royal Majesties.

Splashing, shouts and laughter reached our ears from the outside. I sweltered in the hot cabin, and thought that maybe there was something in this swimming nonsense Shear-Lock demanded of all his sailors. Right now I could only douse myself from a bucket lowered overboard – a risky prospect right now, as the sea closest to a long-foundered ship soon resembles a London sewer (for the same disgusting reason).

Shear-Lock turned his head to look out the portal, longing on his face. “The water is so cool. Perhaps if I were to swim…”

“That’s bad for you, Cap’n. This rash is heat buried in your skin, and it takes heat to drive it out again – all the current medical minds are in agreement.” I dipped the tip of my stumped left forearm into the salve pot and stroked a little more ointment onto his scarred arm, the wound he’d taken the day I’d first saved his life. “It’s the same reason you set fire to a row of houses to stop a city-wide fire by pushing back against the first.”

“I must conceded to your medical superiority, Doctor.” Groaning, the captain sat up and surveyed his nearly-naked and glistening form. “At any rate, I now resemble a slaughtered bullock. If I entered the water it would engender an unhealthy excitement among the shark population. Billy!” The last was a bellow.

“Be sure to wear a hat or at least a head-rag, to keep the worst of the sun off you,” I added as the captain’s cabin boy came in to help his master dress. The surgeon’s mate and I left the cabin for the deck, to employ the ointment among the sunburnt and other rash sufferers in the crew. Doldrums or not, the work on a ship rarely slowed and never ended for any aboard. I’d followed my own advice, as had Wiggins, and we wore knotted head-cloths to stave off our own sun.

“Christ it’s fucking hot,” Wiggins groaned, now that we were free of the captain’s presence. “Suppose we all got together and blew hard on the sails, or fanned our shirts?”

I laughed as I cleaned the worst of the greasy ointment from my hand and stump with another rag. “The only way we could move now would be if we got out in the boats and rowed, towing the Baker. Or if we harpooned Mocha Dick and let that old monster drag us around the islands.”

Wiggins squinted at the relentless sun swimming in the hot moist air. “It’s taking forever to get to Nuevo Filipino. Wish the wind would come back. What’s there anyway we can’t find closer?”

A former _Octavius_ gunner, whose purse held gold taken from Moriarty. “Our next strike,” I said grimly, and went to salve Angel’s sunburnt back.


End file.
